He didn’t ask where I had been. I felt no need to tell him. Later, when things were serious, I would say my mother had died, and I’d never known my father. Later, I would tell many people this fact. It covered my history nicely, and it was rare that anybody probed further.

That night, that first night back, we ate pizza like we had a dozen times before, and watched a film. He had his hand on my knee, and it was comfortable, and lovely, and for a time I forgot about what had happened at home and thought about my life from now on.

When the pizza was finished, I went to the bathroom and purged it quietly. When I emerged, he was there, in the hallway, looking at me.

‘Don’t do that, Paula,’ he said, and his lip curled as he spoke, his words clipped and tinted with disgust. ‘It’s such a cliché, I don’t want to see or hear that.’ He looked me up and down, his eyes probing, reflecting, judging. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you that can’t be fixed in the gym. I’ll take you along with me one day.’

I tried for a smile. I looked for the words that would convey how grateful I was that somebody cared about me and what I did to myself. Back then, it never occurred to me that he should have told me I was beautiful the way I was.

I nodded at him, and just like that my purging days were over. ‘Okay,’ I said, and as an afterthought, I added, ‘Thank you, Tommy.’

Chapter 28

She was still there, at the same table, looking out of the same floor-to-ceiling window at the same black night.

The Ruby Spirit had set sail an hour ago. Paula had sat stiffly in the chair, the half-finished plate in front of her. She’d anticipated shouts; maybe the ship would come to an abrupt stop when somebody spotted the small, pale, blonde form floating in the harbour.

But there had been nothing.

She began to relax, feeling her ramrod-straight spine loosen.

There would be something. When the boat docked, and the cabins came to be cleaned, they would find Anna’s with all her possessions inside.

She patted her pocket where her iPhone sat. She had swept the suite, taken the phone once she had charged it. In the bathroom, she had looked for a long time at the box of condoms in the small cabinet over the sink. The same brand that she had found in Tommy’s wash bag, planted there, she saw now, by Anna.

The threat was gone now, laid to rest, never to return. Of course, there would be others; silly little girls with designs on Tommy. There always had been. That wouldn’t change. But there would never be another threat quite like Anna. Of that, Paula was sure.